Not-a-nymph - Raindrops In The River

@rbhvleo // roberto ferri // mothering by ainslie hogarth // rainer maria rilke // ? // planet of love by richard siken // a self portrait in letters by anne sexton // indian summer by ron hicks

oh this sad warmth of grief; a warm tear on cold cheeks.

what is grief

if not love and longing

embracing?

when grief starts overflowing again, remember, there is still love left. you're still filled with love. no one deserves your love more than you do.

—𝓜𝓼. 𝓜𝓲𝓼𝓪𝓷𝓽𝓱𝓻𝓸𝓹𝓮

Fernando pessoa // Frida Kahlo

LOVE AS VIOLENCE VS LOVE AS SOFTNESS

Ada Limon, The Good Fight // Mary Oliver, West Wind // Danez Smith, Bare // Sappho, Fragment 58.25-26 // Mitski, I Don’t Smoke // Ashe Vernon // Hozier, Cherry Wine // Shauna Barbosa, GPS // Richard Siken, Little Beast // Chen Chen, Summer [The sunflowers fall…] // Warsan Shire // Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

“Reading can be hard, or at least it can present the sort of challenge that modern life is supposed to ease or optimize away. Reading is harder than streaming Netflix, watching a movie, listening to music, or playing video games. Hardness, on its own, is not a virtue. It does, however, matter. It matters to be a disciplined adult. It matters to sit still, to think, to escape the flotsam and be alone with yourself, with another world. It matters to grapple with language, theme, plot, and characterization. It matters that the conclusions aren’t simple, that literature—good literature—is murk. It’s the dark of the wilderness, a lighted match showing that, in fact, there is only more, a vastness you can only begin to comprehend. Reading teaches you that life is not an algorithm and that the certainty of your opinions, neatly sorted into a 2020s rubric, is very much unwarranted, with eternities stretching before and after you. Reading is meeting another consciousness that is not cable television and never will be, that exists at a complexity many lightyears beyond self-righteous pundit panels, the red versus blue, your new spin on the midterms. Reading is knowing those you would never know otherwise. It is, perhaps, the most human thing you can do.”

— You Should Read Books

The one who loves the moon, still loves it when it is not in the sky, when it might not be in front of their eyes. The love is still there.

Kerry Egan, On Living

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

Arthur Rimbaud (b. 20 October 1854)